Avada Kedavra
by Ember Quill
Summary: A young man is standing atop the Astronomy tower, contemplating his sad past. He remembers what has happened to him in a few short years, and he makes the biggest decision of his life... WARNING: Death, Angst, Graphic Violence, etc.


_**A/N: **__Believe it or not, I was quite happy while I wrote this story. Don't ask me how a perfectly content and possibly even elated person can come up with something so sad. I don't know why, but I suddenly had this idea and I just had to get it out. It's angsty to the extreme, so those of you who don't like that sort of thing, stop reading and go find a happier story. Seriously, what would you expect from a story named after the Killing Curse? Anyway, those of you who are still here, read on and enjoy. Please review!_

_**Warnings:**__ Character Death, Angst, Suicide, Graphic Violence_

* * *

_**Avada Kedavra**_

* * *

It was a quiet night at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The air was still. The nocturnal critters were silent. The stars were shining brightly in the midnight sky. The residents of the castle were asleep. Even Argus Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris, both of whom often prowled the castle looking for students out of bed, were abed. There was only one person in the whole castle who was still awake.

A young man was standing atop the Astronomy tower. He had raven hair, in a perpetual state of messiness. His eyes were an emerald green, glowing brightly in the moonlight, even behind his round glasses. He was tall and relatively skinny, dressed in black robes.

There was a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead.

The young man sighed as he contemplated the spectacular view from his position on top of the tower. The grounds were laid out before him, with the Forbidden Forest at the edge. The lake was visible in another direction, and the rest of the castle was behind him.

A memory drifted to the surface of his mind.

* * *

_The Great Hall was packed with students both new and old. They were all staring at the cloaked figure who was sitting at the Head Table. Doubtless he was the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but nobody knew who he was._

"_Ahem," McGonagall cleared her throat quietly, but the room quickly fell silent._

"_Now that our bellies are pleasantly full, or unpleasantly stuffed beyond capacity, I have a few announcements to make. I am sure you have noticed the person sitting three chairs to my right. Allow me to introduce your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for this year: Professor Harry Potter."_

_Harry stood up and pulled back his hood. There was a moment of stunned silence before the entire student body began to applaud and cheer. He was famous after all, as the man who brought down Voldemort at the tender age of seventeen, barely two years ago..._

* * *

He blinked as his mind came back to the present. That event was one of just many in a long chain that had lead to the situation he now found himself in. His life had hardly been a pleasant one, but several months ago, it had taken a turn for the worse.

* * *

_The Dark Mark hovered in the sky above the ramshackle house. Harry was afraid of what he would find within. Though Voldemort was long gone, some of his supporters were still loose, and they were randomly attacking anyone who had stood against their Dark Lord._

_He stepped through the front door and stopped dead. There, in the kitchen, was a dead body. It was none other than Mrs. Weasley! Her wand was still gripped tightly in her lifeless hand, a fierce expression on her motionless face. A few feet away was her husband, who seemed to have also gone down fighting. He moved past those bodies and wandered upstairs, terrified of what he might find throughout the rest of the house._

_Sadness was pushed to the back of his mind as he pressed on, opening the first door he came to. George was there. He was spending a week living with his family, as was everybody else in the Weasley Clan. Harry backed out of the room and moved on. Charlie's body was in the next, Bill's in the one after that. Percy, who had only rejoined his family after the final Battle of Hogwarts, was dead in another room._

_And then, there was the room that Ron and Hermione had been sharing. He paused at the door, steeling himself for what he would find. The couple had finally gotten married just a few months ago, and only recently came back from their Honeymoon. He opened the door and, sure enough, Ron lay on the floor. Hermione was, thank God, absent. She had gone to visit her own family, rather than staying with her new husband, Ron. She would be returning in a moment, actually._

_Then he turned around and saw her there. There were already tears in her eyes. She had been crying for the rest of the Weasley family as she ran up the stairs to Ron's bedroom. Harry stepped aside, inadvertently revealing Ron's body to his wife. She let out a scream of rage and despair as she collapsed to the floor._

_Ginny was thankfully absent. She was staying over at a friend's house for the night._

* * *

He shook his head to clear the memory, but another one floated up to replace it. This one was even worse than the others, because he had seen it happen and been powerless to stop it.

* * *

_He heard her crying before he found her. He knew she would be here, at the house she and her parents had lived in before she left to live with Ron. Her parents were both at work for the day, so she and Harry were the only ones in the house._

_Following the sobs, he ended up at what must have been her old bedroom. Everything in it was still there, in pristine condition, so she had a familiar place to sleep when she visited. She was sitting on her bed, facing away from the door._

"_Hermione?" he whispered. She jerked in surprise and whirled around to face him, pointing a muggle handgun, of all things, straight at his heart._

"_Go away," she muttered. "Go away. I don't want you to be here. I don't want you to talk to me. Nothing you say will convince me. He's gone. I want to be with him, but he's gone, so I'll go too."_

_She stuck the barrel of the gun in her mouth. Harry's eyes widened and he leapt forward to stop her._

"_**Wait**__—"_

_**BANG!**_

_Blood and brain matter sprayed out from the back of her head in every direction as Harry collapsed to his knees. Hermione fell to lay flat on her back, eyes staring up at the ceiling with an expression of deep despair._

_Harry crawled forward until he was kneeling next to her. "Hermione..." he whispered as tears began to fall from his eyes. "Oh God, Hermione..."_

_He sat with her for hours, staring blankly at her empty eyes, wishing with all of his heart that things were different, that those who died were never killed..._

* * *

He twitched as he came back to the present again. Tears were falling freely from his eyes, and had been doing so for quite some time. He missed his friends more than anything in the world. He missed them so much that it felt like there was this huge, empty hole where his heart used to be...where his friends used to be...

Still, he had managed to survive, mostly thanks to one particular person. Unfortunately, fate intervened...

* * *

_There she was. Her red hair was streaming out behind her, and though he was too far away to see, he knew that her hazel eyes were filled to the brim with pure determination and the spunky, fiery personality that was who she was._

_Ginny Potter, his wife of barely a year, was flying. And boy, was she __**good**__! She was a natural flier, so there was no competition when she tried out for the Chaser position on the Holyhead Harpies. She was the best Chaser they had ever seen, according to Gwenog Jones._

_She was holding the quaffle right now, in fact. But no, she passed it, almost too quick to see. Another Chaser caught it, dodged an opposing chaser, and passed it back to Ginny. She reached the goalposts and feinted left, then right. Finally, she threw the quaffle straight through the center hoop, increasing her team's incredible lead by another ten points._

_Then something happened. The two bludgers, which had been hit towards the opposite end of the course by the Harpies' two beaters, veered around and pelted straight for Ginny. The beaters tried to hit them out of the way, but the two balls actually __**dodged**__ the bats and kept going. Ginny tried to dodge, but something was wrong with her broom. It twitched, shook, and did nothing but hover._

_The bludgers both hit either side of her head. She fell limply from her broom. The referee whipped out his wand and stopped her fall, gently lowering her to the ground, but it didn't matter._

_The doctors told him later that her skull was shattered, and pieces of bone had sliced her brain to ribbons. Her body was alive, but __**she**__ wasn't. Her spirit, her soul, had moved on. Her body followed just a few days afterward._

_Later on, they would tell him that the bludgers and her broom had both been enchanted by a former Death Eater, but it didn't matter to him any more. Knowing who it was wouldn't help him. She was gone, and she wasn't coming back._

* * *

His memories cleared up again, but ghosts of his past continued to haunt him. He remembered what had happened afterward, when he had discovered that the same person who had killed the Weasley family and, indirectly, Hermione, had also enchanted the Quidditch equipment to kill Ginny. He remembered tracking the person, dogging his trail until he finally found his adversary. He remembered the first time he successfully used the Cruciatus curse. It was the first time he really wanted the person to feel pain. It wasn't righteous anger that he attempted to fuel it with, but pure, unadulterated rage.

The man had died of shock. Nobody knew it was he who had killed him, so he was not arrested. It never mattered to him. He felt like he deserved a cell in Azkaban, with a dementor locked into the same room. His remorse could not change what happened, but he could not bring himself to admit to his crime, either. So, he returned to Hogwarts, though he was no longer a professor, and said that he was visiting some of the teachers and students he knew. They attempted to comfort him, to pity him, but he would have none of it.

So he found himself here, atop the highest tower in the castle, remembering his horrifying past. He remembered every person he had ever seen die, every funeral he had gone to, every tragedy that ever befell his friends and family.

He remembered Dumbledore, on that one night, standing in the very same place that he now stood. He remembered the green light of the Killing curse as it shot from Snape's wand and connected to Dumbledore. He remembered the body, falling from the tower to land in a heap on the ground below.

"Forgive me," he whispered. "Forgive all of my sins, and forgive what I am about to do. I am sorry, all of you, my friends, my family, my mentors. I...I can't keep living without all of you. I'm so sorry, but I have to do this.."

In his right hand was an eleven-inch piece of holly, with a phoenix-feather core. His wand. He stared at it without really seeing, as a long argument took place in his mind. Several minutes later, he finally decided. He finally chose his fate.

With tears blurring his vision, he backed up until he stood at the edge of the tower. He pointed the wand at his temple and whispered the two words that, until now, had never quite done what they were supposed to do. Now, though, the words would seal his fate.

"Avada Kedavra."

With a flash of green light and a rushing sound, Harry Potter was no more.


End file.
